In this episode, I give an overview of what CI/CD is (both traditionally and for network automation), how it's used, and why it's used in network environments.

If you have questions about network automation, you can ask me on Twitter: @tbourke

One of the things we think about as network automators is the concept of incremental change versus total configuration replacement. Traditionally all our changes have been incremental. From the day a switch/router comes online, it's little change after little change. In this episode I talk about how this changes from incremental changes to total configuration replacement when working with most types of automation.

In this episode I talk quickly about whether APIs should be standardized.

Pretty much all APIs are open in that the vendors allow anyone to access them and the specifications on how to interact with them are public. But using NX-API from Cisco and eAPI from Arista means using two different sets of commands to do that same thing. Projects like OpenConfig/gNMI are meant to provide a single way to configure parameters no matter the devices through a single data model.

While this is useful, in the data center it's not so much a problem we tend to have. Working with one API is OK, since data center networks are typically built using only one vendor.

In this episode of the Network Automation Journey I talk about some other criticisms of network automation that I've heard of lately. 

One of primary the factors pushing organizations into embracing network automation is the need to dynamically generate complex configurations, specifically for campus and data center implementations of EVPN/VXLAN. 

Different devices have different native configuration methods. Generally they're either syntax (think Cisco IOS) or state-based (more rare, like Cisco ACI). 

When I teach an automation course, I'll typically show a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HluANRwPyNo (a bit of foul language in it... but very realistic use of it)

In networking, everyone Google's everything. Got an error message? Google Search. Can't remember how to do something? Google Search. The same is true in network automation. 

Also, this comic from XKCD: https://xkcd.com/979/

Recent discussions on Twitter and in a few classes brought up the venerable VI editor (or the more common upgrade to VI, VIM). 

It was once a must-learn tool for Unix/Linux/BSD administrators. It was used for editing configuration files, data entry, and even coding. 

These days it's not quite the must-have it used to be. In fact, most people working in the industry can get by with the less capable, but far easier to learn, nano editor. 

In this episode, I talk about stunted careers, people (including myself at one point) that just won't learn anything new, despite the world passing them by. Luckily I got out of my stunted phase relatively quickly, but it's something I see in networking from time to time. 

Bad Takes: Is Ansible just automation for people who don't know Python? Of course not. And we'll talk about why.